Can relaxation exercises improve learning

Abstract

Students use both domain-dependent strategies (such as seeking specific domain help) and domain-independent strategies (such as relaxation exercises) to help regulate their affective states when learning. This paper reports a study that compared students' performance in learning data-structures across two systems. While both systems supported domain-dependent strategies, one additionally supported domain-independent strategies (relaxation exercises). The results provide some evidence that students working with both domain-dependent and domain-independent strategies performed better than those working with domain-dependent strategies only. © 2009 The authors and IOS Press. All rights reserved.